The present invention relates to a document process system wherein documents, photographs, drawings, etc. are scanned and registered/transmitted to document management systems as electronic documents.
In conventional document process apparatuses, a document is normally scanned by a single operation and the scanned document is registered/transmitted to a single document management system as a single document.
In a case where a document scanned by a single operation is registered/transmitted to a document management system as a plurality of documents, the scanned document is divided by a specified method as in a case of a pattern-document process apparatus used for a special purpose.
In a case where a document scanned by a single operation is registered/transmitted to a plurality of document management systems as a single document, copies of the document are produced and the same data is registered/transmitted to the plural document management systems.
Where a variety of documents of many pages are scanned and registered/transmitted to a plurality of document management systems as electronic documents, an electronic document process rule, for example, for registering/transmitting electronic documents to the plural document management systems is predetermined and the documents are scanned and processed according to this rule. Thereby, the number of scan operations is reduced, and more efficient document processing is achieved.
In this document process method, however, the methods for predetermining the electronic document process rule for reducing the number of scan operations do not include a method for dividing a document scanned by a single scan operation into a plurality of documents. Because of this, the user has to divide a document at the time of scanning and to repeat the scan operation for each of divisions of the document.
Moreover, it is not possible that the document scanned by a single operation is divided and the divided documents are registered/transmitted to a plurality of document management systems. Furthermore, it is not possible that documents scanned by plural scan operations are coupled and the coupled document is registered/transmitted to a document management system as a single document.
In the case of the pattern document process apparatus used for a special purpose, the document scanned by a single operation can be registered as a plurality of documents. In this case, however, a mechanism for dividing the scanned document is incorporated in a process for registering documents, and this apparatus differs in objective from the apparatus for processing electronic documents by referring to the predetermined process rule. Consequently, there are problems: difficulty in changing the process rule by the user, a low degree of freedom of the process rule, and infeasibility of application to the processing of non-pattern documents.
In the case of producing copies of a document and registering/transmitting the same data to a plurality of document management systems, a document scanned by a single operation is not divided. Consequently, where different data is registered/transmitted to a plurality of document management systems, the user has to divide a document at the time of scan and to repeat the scan operation for each of divisions of the document.